News Archive

A new international partnership has the potential to provide UWA students with exceptional educational and personal benefits as well as delivering further global recognition for our institution.

Many will remember the visit, late last year, of the former US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to help launch a new UWA-based centre aimed at strengthening ties between the US, Australia and the Asian region.

The Perth US-Asia Centre, established in partnership with the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and the American Australian Association, will be a conduit for a deeper Australian understanding of US business, culture, politics and foreign policy.

Now, out of that strategic relationship has come an important new link with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in which our students will have the chance to study at UCLA during our June-July holiday period.

It is a fantastic opportunity for students to experience another world class university (ranked 13 ^th in the world by the ARWU) on the other side of the globe with a mission similar to our own: the creation, dissemination, preservation and application of knowledge for the betterment of our global society.

Located on the eastern rim of the Pacific Ocean in one of the world's most diverse and vibrant cities, UCLA reaches beyond its campus boundaries to establish partnerships locally and globally.

Our University, on the eastern rim of the Indian Ocean, also enjoys a location that gives us a genuinely unique perspective of the region which puts us in the same time-zone (give or take a couple of hours) as about 60 per cent of the world's population in nations which promise the greatest economic growth of this century.

We recognise that alongside our ties with our Asian neighbours, we continue to develop our long-standing cultural and economic links with other parts of the world, notably the United States and the European Union.

Our Perth US-Asia Centre enables us to draw strength from Western Australia's special geographic position to analyse and understand both the United States and Asia. The Centre is set to become a leading policy think-tank on the Australia-Asia-US strategic and economic relationship as well as a teaching and research centre.

As I indicated in the UWA Futures paper, in order to ensure that we deliver a distinctive, high-quality and highly valued educational experience to our students we need to use all of our assets - from our local campus facilities to our international connections - to best effect.

The new UWA-UCLA link is a fine example of such distinctiveness and contributes further to our goal of doubling the participation of undergraduate students in study abroad programs by 2020.

This UCLA partnership reflects our desire, articulated as part of the transition to the new courses structure over the past few years, to provide well-rounded graduates prepared for a global future.

Paul Johnson

Vice-Chancellor